Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 1
The printed edition of The Papers of Robert Treat Paine is a selected edition from the Robert Treat Paine Collection at the Massachusetts His¬torical Society along with items located in repositories across the coun¬try.1 Despite the cult of autograph hunters clustered around the icons of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, there have been relatively few items located in a nation-wide search aside from routine legal docu¬ments. Paine was careful to preserve his incoming correspondence, but unfortunately his correspondents were not so historically minded. His letters to his father and his sister Eunice were probably returned to him after their respective deaths and therefore are preserved among the Rob¬ert Treat Paine Papers; but aside from a few scattered letters and drafts, most of his outgoing correspondence is lost—notably letters to his wife, his brother-in-law General David Cobb, his elder sister Abigail and her husband Joseph Greenleaf, as well as his colleagues in law and politics. While he was at the Continental Congress Paine noted in his diary most of the personal letters he wrote. These included 30 to his wife; 35 to David Cobb; 11 to Joseph Greenleaf; 3 to Abigail Greenleaf; 4 to Eunice Paine; 12 to Joseph Palmer; and 8 to Joseph Hawley. Of these only 4 to Palmer, and one each to Cobb and Hawley are known to survive.
The published Papers include correspondence to and from Paine begin¬ning with his days at Harvard and continuing until the end of his life. Specifically, all correspondence between Paine and family members and friends, and all correspondence with fellow lawyers will be published in full. Also included are Paine's letters to clients and the corresponding incoming letters. However, as a rule, letters from clients which are not followed up by letters by Paine and which do not relate to other published correspondence will not be included. Also included are representative examples of his allegorical writings, an example of his sermons, and an example of his Harvard undergraduate club writings.
Not published in this edition are documents considered by the editors R30to be routine, casual or repetitive (such as powers of attorney, deeds, mortgages, papers relating to the settlement of his father's insolvent es¬tate, formal documents signed by Paine in his capacities of justice of the peace, attorney general or attorney). Also excluded are Paine's diaries because of their paucity of information, often noting only the weather and seldom more than the most cursory of narration. For example, while in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, he simply noted: "cool the Independence of the States voted declared." Diary entries will, however, be used for annotation purposes; and a typescript of the entire diary can be consulted at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
A microfilm edition of the complete Robert Treat Paine Papers was published by the Massachusetts Historical Society and includes a full item listing of the contents and a name index.
The main transcription principle has been to render the text literally with as few modifications as practical. Original spelling of all words has been retained, aside from the special case of abbreviations (see below). Editorial standardization has been imposed only in the following instances. Each dateline appears at the head of a letter, against the right margin, regardless of its original location. All letters similarly begin with an indented salu¬tation, running directly into the text. Superscriptions —the internal ad¬dress lines—are not referenced unless they offer additional information to that which appears on the regular address leaf.
All editorial insertions into the text are noted within square brackets ([ ]).
Punctuation. All sentences begin with an uppercase letter, and end with a period unless another appropriate terminal punctuation is provided in the original. Sentence breaks have been imposed where the editors felt it necessary to clarify the thought. Aside from sentence breaks, all original punctuation has been retained.
Abbreviations. Abbreviations are retained in the text wherever it is possi¬ble to deduce the intended meaning from the context. Generally the pat¬tern of abbreviating followed British usage of employing the first several letters of the word followed by the last letter. Thus, September is abbrevi¬ated as "Sepr." rather than "Sept." Among the most common abbreviations within this category are: Dr. for Dear or Debtor; wn. for when; recd. for received; wt. for what; wch. for which; yr. for your.
The terminal letter of an abbreviation was often raised into superscript in the 18th-century text, but here all superscripts have been lowered to the line. A period is inserted at the end of all abbreviations without punc¬tuation, which is particularly useful in those cases when the terminal letter was formerly in superscript. Wherever the original abbreviation used a colon it has been retained.
Whenever the intended meaning appears ambiguous or otherwise un¬clear, the editors have spelled the word in full indicating the added letters within square brackets ([ ]).
Scribal devises. Certain scribal devises were used in 18th-century script which cannot be readily rendered in type. In each instance, these have been silently rendered in the text as the spelled-out version of the devises. The most frequent instance is the old English letter the thorn, often mis¬transcribed as the letter "y." This has always been spelled out as "th," as in the, them, that, etc. The other frequent usage is the "tailed p" to indi¬cate per in business transactions. In each instance, this has been spelled out in full, although when per is simply abbreviated to "pr.," the abbrevia¬tion is allowed to stand.
The tilde (~) used over a consonant, generally the "m," has been ren¬dered as the double consonant.
An abbreviation which appears in the original as "yo" has been rendered as "you."
Cancelled matter and questionable readings. Whenever available, the final or recipient's copy is used in the printed edition. Where only a draft copy exists, cancelled matter is included in the printed version. The cancelled matter is noted in italics within angle brackets >cancelled matter<. When cancelled matter is replaced by an improved text, both are printed with the cancelled matter appearing first.
For any questionable reading of a word, a possible reading is given with a question mark within square brackets ([marke?]). When a word is completely illegible, it is noted by a series of ellipsis points within square brackets ([...]).
Each entry is followed by an editorial note explaining the physical item. Standard abbreviations are used for recipient's copy (RC), draft (dft), manuscript (MS), document signed (DS), or letterbook copy (LbC). The location of each item is then noted within parentheses. Unless otherwise R32stated, all items are from the Robert Treat Paine Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. The address from the original address sheet is printed; internal address lines are not included unless no address sheet survives. Endorsements by the recipient are noted but not printed unless they pro¬vide additional information not directly discernible from the text.
Annotation. The editors have attempted to identify all individuals and situations necessary to a full comprehension of the Papers. No attempt has been made to identify individuals who simply transmitted letters, were litigants in routine legal cases, or received one-time mention in finan¬cial accounts. Archaic or obscure words have been defined, but not un¬usual words found in a standard modern dictionary. Translations are pro¬vided for all foreign language texts except when a phrase is current in common parlance.
A full microfilm edition of the Robert Treat Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society is available through the Society.